3 tips to make your iPhone more secure

By Brian Mastroianni

January 6, 2016 / 4:19 PM
/ CBS News

What should have been toward the top of everyone's New Year's resolutions? Making sure their phones are secure.

Millions of us walk around with vast amounts of personal data, photos, essential phone numbers and often sensitive financial information on our now-indispensable smartphones, so it's more important than ever to make sure it's all protected.

If someone got ahold of your phone, you wouldn't want them to easily access your information or apps. It's important to lock your phone. And you can change the settings so your passcode is required immediately, or within a certain amount of time after you set down your phone. Shorter times are more secure, since that would give a thief or a snoop less of an opportunity to access your phone's contents.

How do you change your passcode settings? Within Settings on your home screen, go to Touch ID or Passcode, select Passcode, then select Require Passcode and then choose your options for how quickly you want the passcode option to appear.

Disable control center access

CNET

Profis warned that "another security hole" in people's iPhones is access to their control centers. If you lose your phone, someone could prevent you from tracking it just by putting your device in Airplane Mode. To prevent your control center from being so easily accessible, head to Settings, then Control Center, then Access on Lock Screen, and toggle the slider to "off."

Find My iPhone

CNET

What if all else fails and you ultimately lose your phone or it does get stolen? How do you retrieve it? Well, luckily, Find My iPhone is a feature on everyone's iPhones -- you just have to use it. In Settings, go to iCloud, scroll down to Find My iPhone, and toggle the slider to "On." This enables you to track your phone on a map from any iOS device or your computer and see where it went.